SHAD. 
983 
long been known that during the spawning-season the 
Pilchard is so dry and tasteless as to be scarcely 
eatable. 
Man is not the Pilchard’s only enemy. Fishes and 
Dolphins make havoc among its shoals. Among them 
Sharks (such as Squalus acanthias and C archarias glau- 
cus) and Scimnoids are the most destructive. 
Couch “ has described and figured a Clupea squa- 
mo-pinnata, which is stated to have larger scales than 
the Shads, and has therefore been explained by Gun- 
ther 6 as a hybrid between the Pilchard and either the 
THE SHAD 
CLUPEA 
Fig. 248 and PI 
Length of the maxillaries at least about 45 % of that c 
about 50 %, least depth of the tail about 75 %, length 
of the maxillaries. Number of scales in a rou 
Twaite or the Allice Shad, though the two last-mentioned 
forms do not breed, so far as we know, in salt water. 
The defective specimen, the only one known, can only 
serve, which was all that Couch intended, as an in- 
centive to further investigations. More noteworthy is 
another form, also found in English waters, which re- 
sembles the Pilchard in the striation of the opercula 
and the large scales on one side of the body, but has 
smaller scales, like those of the Herring, on the other 
side. This form has been figured and described by Day* 
as a cross between the Pilchard and the Herring. 
iW. stamsillen). 
ALOSA. 
te XLIII, fig. 2. 
f the head. Longitudinal diameter of the eyes d at most 
of the sub operculum" at most about 49 %, of the length 
along the sides of the body at least about 60. 
Wmm 
Fig. 248. Clupea alosa, var. finta , 9, * 1 2 of the natural size. Taken in a Salmon-trap off Killingholm (Stromstad Fjord) on the 18th July, 
1881, by Mr. C. A. Hansson. 
“ 1. c., p. 123, pi. CCVI. 
1 Cat., 1. c., p. 436. 
c Proc. Zool. Soc. Loud. 1887, p. 129, pi. XV. 
d In specimens more than 1 dm. long. 
e At the suture with the operculum. 
124 
Scandinavian Fishes. 
